U by Moen Showerhead

The U by Moen uses its Wi-Fi connection to let you start your shower
from bed, the goal being that the water will be warm by the time you
arrive. Even if you set aside the water waste issues, it’s maybe
best keep the internet out of the bathroom when possible.

First of all, showers that allow you to set the water temperature are
great, they’re a big advance over the typical hot/cold taps. I’m sure
that we’ve all been literally burned by shower water when someone
flushes a toilet, and we’ve all wasted time and water warming up the
shower on a cold morning. With good temperature control, you set it,
turn it on, and it tells you when it’s ready so you don’t waste time
and water.

A connected shower could do a lot more. It could tell you how much
water is being used, it could estimate heating and water costs, it
could shut itself off if you leave it on, it could turn off the shower
exhaust when the steam has cleared. Plumbing as a field has a lot of
room for innovation.

Simplehuman Wi-Fi Trash Can

Not coming out until May, Simplehuman’s voice-activated, Wi-Fi trash
can open or close when you tell it to, and pairs with an app to help
you order more trash bags when you’ve run out.

Trash is smelly and a health hazard so I want a can with a lid (to
keep in the smells) that opens by itself (so I don’t have to touch
it). Once it has electricity it might as well have a network
connection and a sensor to report when it’s full. Consider an office
building with a hundred trash cans: it would be very useful for
building maintenance to know when a can fills up. Garbage cans should
be integrated with paper towel dispensers that tell maintenance when
they are out of paper.

Kérastase Hair Coach

A collaboration between beauty company L’Oreal and generally solid
tech upstart Withings, this Wi-Fi hair brush (yes, you read that
correctly) has an onboard microphone (again, yep) that listens to
hair as you brush to identify hair issues. Simultaneously, various
sensors count brush strokes, measure brushing patterns, and
determine how much pressure you’re applying to your scalp. To think,
we somehow survived this long without.

Hair is like a canary in a coal mine when it comes to health issues.
Everything that you take into your body ends up in your hair (hence
the hair test for drugs). This particular brush may not have medical
sensors but the potential is there.

Sunflower Smart Patio Umbrella

Technically not available until 2018, but demonstrated last week,
the Sunflower smart patio umbrella has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a security
camera, integrated lighting, and various sensors, all with the aim
of moving to block the sun wherever it is in the sky.

The sun moves and therefore I move when I’m sitting outside. Not sure
what the question is here. Also Wi-Fi is weak away from the house so
I’d be happy for a boost, and if there’s electricity there might as
well be a USB outlet. I wish it had a speaker and microphone so I
could tell my kids to bring me some tasty refreshments from inside.

Velux Active Smart Window

Working in concert with smart home sensor company Netatmo, Velux’s
smart windows automatically open when the air quality inside is bad,
close when it’s too cold outside, and are otherwise responsive to
internal and external conditions. Just hope they don’t get stalled
out on a firmware update when a storm’s brewing.

Please, please, please let me buy this today! This is the best
product of the bunch.

Here in the United States we build extremely stupid houses and our
windows are the worst in the world. Almost every house I see going up
in my neighborhood uses modern double hung (sash) windows, the very
dumbest kind of window:

Here you see that the window opens by lifting the bottom half up (or
pulling the top half down). What holds the window up when you open
it? In an old-style sash window, there are counterweights in the wall
next to the window that hold it up. They’re great.

A modern design eliminates these counterweights, and instead
essentially holds the window up by friction. In other words,
these windows are hard to open and close. I have 36 of these
windows in my house, and I’m the only person in my household that can
open and close the windows!

If I can open the windows in my house I can avoid using air
conditioning and I can breath fresh air. But to do that, I need to
open and close all the windows in the house. I can’t just open one
window, I need air to flow through the house. If the house is well
designed, cool air will enter from ground-level windows and hot air
will exit from the top. One side of the house is typically cooler, so
I need windows open on both sides to get a cross breeze.

Even if I use air conditioning, there’s a “thermal inversion” in the
evening, when it suddenly cools. If you have a whole-house fan you
can open the windows on the ground floor and use the fan to quickly
exhaust hot air and draw in cool air in the evening, so you can turn
off your air conditioning at night.

With 36 windows, I am simply not going to go around my house all day
adjusting the windows for efficiency, even though this is costing me a
lot of money. And if it starts to rain, running up and down three
stories to close the windows is a real hassle.

What is needed are windows that can open and close by remote control,
automatically. They should be under the control of the thermostat and
may need input from the weather report. In short, you need connected
windows.

What about security?

Are all of these devices doomed to be hacked? Is a firmware update
going to make them inoperable at a critical moment?

If so, then all of us in computer security have failed. The internet
can meaningfully enhance ordinary consumer appliances, and it is our
job to make that secure. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.